Libpng12

Trying to launch the software right now on a 64 bits system won't work. Quartus will complain that libpng12 does not have the right ELF class. This is because Quartus is launched in 32 bits mode by default. We need to add an environment variable to switch to 64 bits mode. Please, refer to the next section regarding this matter.

If this works, do not forget to logout/login for the change to have effect.

USB-Blaster Driver

The USB-Blaster is a cable that allows you to download configuration data from you computer to you FPGA, CPLD or EEPROM configuration device. However Altera only provides support for RedHat Entreprise, SUSE Entreprise and Cent OS and we are required to do a little bit of work to make it work with Archlinux. If you want some more detail about this cable, please refer to http://www.altera.com/literature/ug/ug_usb_blstr.pdf

Let's now make a final check by relaunching Template:Filename after having reloaded the udev rules.

$ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
$ jtagconfig

Altera Quartus v11.0

The above does not seem to work successfully for version 11 of Quartus. Whether it is the new version, Gnome 3, or Kernel 3 I do not know.

It can be run in 32-bit with Multilib however.

Installation works as previously. However enable multilib and install lib32-libpng12 rather than libpng12, and do not set the QUARTUS_64BIT=1 as described above.

Quartus now appears to run fine. USB JTAG connection seems to be working with the above method at least on a 32-bit system.

If your system is 64bit rename the linux64 directory in altera/<ver>/quartus/ to linux64.bak. Then make a link to the linux folder in the same directory and call it linux64.

Workarounds for Quartus II

Qsys can't import custom components

This bug should be fixed in version 11.1 of Quartus II. There is a problem in Quartus II when parsing the /etc/issue file for reading the distribution name (more information on the chinese version of ArchWiki, your preferred online tranlator is your friend here ;-)). The problem can be circumvented by removing the special characters from the file.